


Divided Loyalties

by ZoeyMcRoyan



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-13 11:27:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18468010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZoeyMcRoyan/pseuds/ZoeyMcRoyan
Summary: Life isn't fair! But it can be outright cruel when you have to choose betrail to keep your love and your friend save and with that losing your best friend and you one love....





	Divided Loyalties

**Author's Note:**

  * For [https://the-black-haired-archer.tumblr.com/](/gifts?recipient=https%3A%2F%2Fthe-black-haired-archer.tumblr.com%2F).



> This is for my dear Kili... https://the-black-haired-archer.tumblr.com/ Thank you for plotting with me in Dublin...

Curling up into a tight ball and never wake up sounded like bliss. Ori wished he could turn into stone like his forefathers in the old legends, but that mercy wasn’t for him. The scribe had to endure the pain. He had lost his best friend, and at the same time, Ori had forfeited his only chance of true love in his life.   
Dwarves only loved once. If you found you One, you were supposed to hold on to them and never let go.   
Life was cruel, it forced Ori to decide to stay loyal to his friend and with that protect his One but to lose him or to let his best friend fall prey to a curs, having his One but endanger everyone. What choice was that? Life wasn't fair, and Ori started to lose hope.   
Now seeing the dark-haired archer again, hurt so profoundly.   
The scribe had hoped he could keep his distance from the other, but the younger Durin needed a friend and comfort. The disappearance of his brother devastated him. The prince reached out the one person he trusted besides his brother, like in old times. It was like nothing had changed. But for Ori, everything was different in more than one way. He felt dirty. It was ripping his heart into shreds. How could he comfort his friend and carry an essential secret like that?   
Yes, Ori was loyal to one friend and in a way, he was loyal to Kili as well. He was protecting the dark-haired dwarf, but it couldn’t ease the ache in him, seeing his love suffer like that.

Ori cradled himself. It was an attempt to keep himself in one piece. Hugging his arms around himself was the hopeless try to keep himself from falling apart. His shell was holding, but his insides were a smoking pile of rubble. Ori felt empty, just filled only with pain. The guilt was ripping him apart.   
He hadn’t cried at the king’s burial, he had moaned the death of the dwarf who had been so much more than just the king, but there had been no tears. Neither had he spilt them when his best friend left. But that pain was nothing compared to what he felt now.   
One late night after the dwarves of Erebor had lain their King to rest, Fili visited the scribe in the library.  
At first, the crown prince was searching for some texts and asked his friend for some help. In the beginning, Ori hadn’t thought about it, but it was strange. Usually, the blonde would ask him directly for specific information but not that night. It was like that the other wanted to hide his true intentions. The blonde dwarf was deeply troubled, and when Ori asked his friend about it, the other broke down and confided in him.   
It had been days that Fili felt a change in him, a desire he had never experienced. He described it like darkness creeping over his thoughts, influencing his feelings, planting suspicion and paranoia into him.   
At first, he hadn’t been aware of it, but when Balin had asked him, why he made such irrational choices, Fili had recognised the pattern. His behaviour mirrored that of Thorin’s influenced by the Dragon- sickness. Fili fought it as best he could and tried to stay true to himself but questioning every decision and very thought was taking it’s tall.  
The two dwarves had searched for hours through the vast library of Erebor. It had been sheer luck that the old scroll had survived the destruction to that section of the library by Smaug and that they found it.   
It was a tale, marked as forbidden, that told the story of one of the lesser known Kings of the line of Durin, who fell in love or better lust with a human woman. She liked him but was deeply in love with her betrothed and for that rejected his courting. In his humiliation, the dwarf tried to force the woman, and when she got away, he slew her spouse. In her pain, she cursed the dwarf and his offspring with madness.   
No luck should bring the kingship to the firstborn of the line of Durin. Greed, fear and paranoia should befall the firstborn of the line after the death of the king and should grow with the years of the kingship and with the years that the curse stayed unbroken.   
It can only be broken, if the heir to the throne leaves the mountain and with it his kingdom and everyone he loves voluntarily. The curse will not be broken by death.

The madness in the line of Durin had nothing to do with the dragon or the Arkenstone; it was a curse. How Thorin had been able to withstand it that long was a mystery. Maybe it was because he wouldn’t be king as long as the mountain wasn’t reclaimed. But Fili was feeling it, and he was afraid. The blonde felt his personality drowned in darkness. He had to act if he wanted to stay true to himself and not become only a cruel, greedy mockery of the loyal, just and soft-hearted warrior. There had been only one option, and the blonde had known it. With that realisation, Fili broke down crying.   
His path was clear now. He would never be king. The blond would become a lonely dwarf wondering the world on his own. Fili would never see his mother again, and he had to leave his beloved brother behind to protect him as he had always done in his life. The prince would go and never return.   
The responsibility of kingship would fall to his younger brother, and it broke the blonde’s heart even more. His beloved free-spirited brother was strong enough to carry the burden, but it would change him.   
Fili made Ori swear an oath to protect Kili and help him to bear the burden, and Ori had done it, full well knowing that it would break him.

It had taken the two dwarves a few days to prepare for the blonde to disappear and some more to ensure that Kili wasn’t in Erebor at that time.   
The crown prince had sent his brother on a diplomatic mission to Mirkwood, to rebuild the relationship with the elves eventually.   
On the third night after Kili had left for the Woodland Realm, Fili stripped himself of all his royal crests, claret himself in plain cloth and left Erebor forever. He took only his weapons, without any markings of his family with him and some provisions. The blonde had even stripped himself of the braids his mother and his brother gifted him. The only meaningful thing he took was the rune stone his mother had given Kili before the quest.   
Ori had seen how Fili had cradled it, turning his face away from the scribe to hide his tears.   
Ori had hugged him, his eyes burning, but not crying. Fili had bumped their heads one last time and the turned. He walked away without looking back once.

The scribe could hear footsteps outside his door. He took a deep and shuddering breath dabbing furiously at his eyes. He couldn’t show any weakness. It would arise questions he wasn’t able to answer. Maybe it was selfish, but he couldn’t risk losing Kili’s trust. The dark-haired archer needed every support and friend he had to overcome the opsticals in his way to claim the crown. Preparing to become king and dealing with the grieve of losing his brother at the same time was hard on the young Durin, especially with no support from his immediate family. Thorin was dead, his mother still in Ered Luin and Fili missing, Kili was for the first time in his life on his own. The prince needed his friend now more than ever, and Ori had promised Fili to support his brother. The scribe was determined to keep that promise, no matter what.   
So being seen crying wasn’t an option. The scribe picked himself up from the floor, straightened his close and set down at his desk. He arranged his papers that it looked like that he was working on them, placed his new glasses on top and when the door opened after a short knock, he landed back groaning an rubbing his eyes.   
Ori was glad that he could hide his face for just a few seconds longer because new grief and regret threatened to overwhelm him. Of cause had he known that Kili was on the other side of his door. His footsteps were just unmistakable, at least for the scribe.  
“Hey, you!” a quiet, tired voice greeted him, so unlike his friend. The archer’s hopeful happiness was missing. His voice was lifeless.   
Ori rubbed his face a little more and taking a deep breath.   
Suddenly strong hands touched his shoulders firmly, and a nose nuzzled his hair lightly. “You are working too much, my friend!” Kili whispered into his ear. “You should take better care of yourself. You looked very tired lately.”  
A shudder ran through Ori’s entire body when he felt Kili’s soft kiss pressed into his hair and heard the accompanying word. “I need you, Ori! You are the One who keeps me sane in this whole madness!”  
It took the scribes last reserves of strength to not burst into tears here and there, confessing everything to the other dwarf. In another life Kili’s offer would have been everything he had dreamed of.   
Now he couldn’t shut his eyes from the truth anymore. All the little things he had tried to ignore and had himself forbidden to think about.   
There had been so many secret smiles. Ori had convinced himself of interpreting too much into it. And then the small gifts and little gestures, all so very considerate. If you didn’t know the dark-haired dwarf, you wouldn’t think he could be that thoughtful. The scribe knew he could, but he told himself that it was out of friendship, that Kili was just glad to have a close friend at his side in all the chaos.  
Ori closed his eyes, and his head fell back just a little. He needed the contact just for a short moment. Kili was his One, and he was courting Ori.  
The scribe couldn’t control his emotions any longer. Tears spilled out of his eyes, and a strangled sob escaped his mouth.   
Kili wraps his arms around him from behind, and he pressed his face into the crook of Ori’s neck, whispering comforting words the scribe couldn’t understand at first.   
“Oh, Ori! – Ori I wish you would talk to me.” Kili stated and kissed the other's neck. “I can’t imagine that there would be anything you could tell me that would keep me from loving you!”  
No wound by any weapon would have hurt as much as the prince’s words hurt the scribe at that moment. Ori felt like his insides were burning.   
He set up and turned looking into his One's eyes.   
“I love you Kili! And I’m so, so very sorry! I never wanted to hurt you, but I had no choice!” he took a deep breath. Kili’s expression was full of concern and confusion.   
Ori stroked tenderly over the others stubbled cheek.   
“I’m sorry Kili! I betrayed you!”

TBC


End file.
